Industrial Heat Shot™ and Clean Fuels & Products Shot™
To reach the nation’s goal of a net-zero-carbon-emissions economy by 2050, while simultaneously spurring well-paying jobs and economic growth, America must find innovative solutions to tackle the climate crisis head on. As a response to that challenge, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) created the Energy Earthshots™ to target the remaining solution points of the most challenging technical problems across our energy economy.
The Energy Earthshots aim to accelerate breakthroughs of more accessible, affordable and dependable clean energy and climate solutions within the decade. Two of these Earthshots—the Industrial Heat Shot™ and the Clean Fuels & Products Shot™—will play a critical role in decarbonizing America’s industrial sector.
Industrial Heat Shot
The Industrial Heat Shot aims to develop cost-competitive industrial heat decarbonization technologies with at least 85% lower greenhouse gas emissions by 2035. Industrial heating is an extremely energy-intensive process.
In 2020 alone, the industrial sector accounted for 33% of the nation's primary energy use and 30% of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. This is what makes the mission of drastically reducing these emissions even more critical to reaching our 2050 goals. If achieved, it would put the American industrial sector on course to reduce its carbon-equivalent emissions by 575 million metric tons by 2050, which is roughly equal to the emissions generated by all passenger cars on the road in 2020.
Industrial heating accounts for about 9% of the entire U.S. emissions footprint. The Industrial Heat Shot™ will support the overarching strategy detailed in DOE's Industrial Decarbonization Roadmap. The roadmap emphasizes the urgency of deep decarbonization across the industrial sector and presents a staged research, development, and demonstration agenda for industry and government that will deliver the technologies needed to dramatically reduce emissions, increase American manufacturing competitiveness, and create high-quality jobs.
Clean Fuels & Products Shot
The Clean Fuels & Products Shot aims to decarbonize the carbon-based fuels and chemical industries by using alternative sources of carbon to advance cost-effective technologies to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Through a staged research, development, and demonstration strategy, this Shot aims to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a minimum of 85% by 2035.
This Shot supports the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Grand Challenge and will put the nation on a path to achieving a net-zero emissions economy by 2050 through developing the sustainable feedstocks and conversion technologies necessary to produce crucial fuels and carbon-based products in sectors that are difficult to fully decarbonize. The Clean Fuels & Product Shot™ builds on DOE's role in the interagency Sustainable Aviation Fuel Grand Challenge. In addition, this Shot will help establish the United States as a world leader in clean fuel and clean carbon-based chemical production, create and maintain new high-quality jobs, and provide enhanced energy security with robust domestic supply chains.